


through the open doors the harmless phantoms on their errands glide

by septici



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Ghosts, M/M, Scared Ryan Bergara, Shane Madej Is Shook, ghosts are real in this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-04 10:15:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15839184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/septici/pseuds/septici
Summary: “PUT. YOUR. FREE. HANDS. OUT.” the ghost commands, and Shane and Ryan hasten to follow the instruction. He looks at Ryan, hard terror leaking onto his face, and Ryan’s breathing seems to pick up impossibly. Both of their hands go cold, very cold, and Shane feels sort of weird, tired almost, like something’s draining the energy straight out of his body. He feels like he’s just woken up, or he’s just about to go to sleep, limbs heavy and head foggy. Just before he thinks he could pass out, the feeling stops, and he blinks at Ryan, and then slowly turns his head.There’s a third person sitting with them.(title from a description of chillingham castle by the poet henry w. longfellow)





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> UHHHHHHHHHHHHH BEWARE this is barely edited b/c like i would edit my writing but that would require yknow Reading it which  
> ew  
> lol
> 
> enjoy anyway ! <3

****

I

Shane raises his eyebrows when he looks up at Chillingham Castle for the first time, the supposedly “haunted” location Ryan’s dragged him along to. It doesn’t look foreboding in the slightest—admittedly, some of the locations they go to do leave Shane feeling slightly uneasy, especially Pennhurst Asylum and Eastern State Penitentiary (see: all the locations that were previously prisons). He shivers a little, a combination of the unpleasant memories and chilly English weather. Here, though, listening to the trickling of water from the running fountain and letting his gaze travel over the pale brickwork, he feels almost comfortable. Ryan shivers too, though Shane suspects it’s because of his unnecessarily devout belief in the paranormal, not the cold. He pulls his jacket a little closer and looks down at his friend, raising his angular eyebrows even higher.

“This place looks _fun_ ,” he says, turning his pale torchlight to the castle walls, letting it climb over the bricks in a zig-zag motion. Ryan scoffs and starts towards Chillingham’s doors, turning his torch on as well. Shane can almost feel the reluctancy seeping off of the guy as he trudges behind him, and he lets out a little sigh. Already, he can tell that this is going to be an eventful episode. 

They find their way to the castle’s great hall and sit down, Ryan fidgeting anxiously and Shane stretching his legs out and admiring the décor of the place. The red drapes look like flowing liquid, and the chandelier, although not lit, is clearly a crystal masterpiece. Four banners hang at the end of the room, and Shane squints in the low light to try and see what they could be. Ryan gets out his phone and TJ starts the camera rolling, and Shane sits back to listen and offer occasional commentary on the history of the castle. 

Though originally serving as a monastery in the 12th century, the castle allegedly held a strategically important location in medieval times; located on the border between the two feuding nations of England and Scotland, it was used as a staging post for English armies entering Scotland and was also repeatedly attacked by Scottish armies and raiding parties heading south. In 1344, a licence to crenellate allowing battlements to be built was issued by King Edward III, upgrading the stronghold to a fully fortified castle. During World War II, the castle was used as army barracks. Much of the decorative wood was said to have been stripped out and burned by the soldiers posted there. 

The most famous apparent ghost of the castle is the "blue boy", who according to the owners used to haunt the Pink Room. Guests reported seeing blue flashes and a blue "halo" of light above their beds following a loud wailing sound. The alleged hauntings ceased after renovation work found the remains of a man and a young boy inside a 10-foot-thick wall. Shane’s jaw drops open a bit at that.

“The bones were in the _walls_? That’s not a great burial site.” Ryan snickers, looking up from his phone with bright eyes. Shane secretly revels in it; he can already tell that Ryan is going to somehow make Chillingham more terrifying than it needs to be, and he’s going to melt his own mind in the process. He doesn’t mind though; it’s free entertainment at best, and something that can easily be solved with a bowl of popcorn and annoying jokes at worst. Shane never truly enjoys seeing Ryan get himself all worked up over ghouls, but sometimes it’s kind of funny, just because of how ridiculous the whole idea of it is to Shane. He supposes he can understand why people believe in ghosts—it’s comforting, in some way, to believe that life doesn’t stop after you die. Shane doesn’t like thinking about death; he doesn’t have that comfort of eternal life, nor does he have the comfort of an all-fatherly god who will look after him no matter what. He just has uncertainty, questions he can’t answer, and it’s unsettling.

Ryan gives some more clarification on the supposed ghosts in the castle—there’s three supposedly visible ones and many more that are more like an “energy” (code for bullshit, in Shane’s opinion, which he offers, resulting in a slap on the arm from Ryan)—and then they head off to do their ghost hunting thing. Shane clutches the spirit box and Ryan holds a bagful of motion sensor lights. They walk first to the castle’s chapel, where apparently two men can often be heard conversing.

“I’ll be honest, Ryan, the only two men we’re going to hear conversing are going to be ourselves,” he grumbles, turning the spirit box over in his hands as Ryan instructs him to turn it on. His counterpart just rolls his eyes and mutters a simple “shut up, Shane”, so he activates the spirit box. Immediately, the stupid device begins to spit out that unfortunately familiar loud skipping static sound, and Ryan raises his voice to talk over it.

“If there’s anyone here who wants to talk to us, you can use this box to say something… maybe a Bible verse, or something, I don’t know.”

“You want them to repeat a whole Bible verse to us?”

“This _is_ a chapel. Some people got married here.” Ryan looks up at him with those same bright eyes and that boyish grin, and Shane cackles.

“Were you guys at the wedding that happened here?” Shane looks around, and Ryan’s eyes go wide as he suddenly decides to interpret something from the static.

“Oh my God, I thought it just said… I thought it said ‘yeah’,” he says almost reverently, looking down at the spirit box like it holds all the answers to life’s questions. Shane finds himself wondering if Ryan ever looks at him like that, but then shakes the thought from his head and says something stupid to get Ryan laughing. They give communicating with the voices in the chapel one more try, and then give up. Ryan turns on his heel suddenly, narrowly missing hitting Shane’s jaw with the torch as he shines it through one of the windows. “I swear I hear tapping on that glass.” Shane focuses his ears and then blinks rapidly. He, too, can hear quickfire tapping, though to him it sounds more like gunshots.

“Might be raining,” he says instead, turning around to exit the chapel. “Come on.” Ryan scoffs incredulously, and the two of them bicker about Shane’s scepticism for almost the whole walk over to the castle’s inner pantry, where the white pantry ghost is said to reside.

“You could see this whole ass white ghost and you’d just be like, ha, the wind’s real strong today, or some shit,” Ryan chides, and Shane just snorts.

“I’m here to see proof! If I see a whole ghost I’m not going to deny it, but unfortunately Ryan, you’re yet to show me that.”

“You’ve seen loads of concrete proof—”

“I have not, I’ve seen what you think is ‘proof’, which is, in fact, bullshit.” Shane can see the pink tint in his co-worker’s face, which usually only appears when Shane’s taken it just a bit too far. Ryan turns away from him, solidifying his worries, and reluctantly suggests that they each spend solitary time in the pantry to try and talk to the ghost.

“This apparition, um, apparently she begs for water, so I’ve got a bottle here, which we can, um, offer to her. Some people think that she was poisoned.” As is tradition, Shane goes first, taking the fucking spirit box and Ryan’s water bottle with him. He sits on the dirty floor of the pantry for five minutes, feeling like an idiot as he talks to thin air and strains his ears to hear any differences in the radio static.

“Anyone here with me? Any ghoulie ghouls who wanna take some of my water?” Shane shakes the bottle, and then drops his arm back to his side, raising his eyebrows at the night-vision camera. He almost drops the spirit box when it emits probably the most convincing EVP he’s ever heard:

“THANK. YOU.” He squints at the box, and then gives himself an internal shake—the uneasy aura of this castle is really getting to him some. Mercifully, TJ calls from behind the door that his time is up. If he walks a little quicker than necessary out of the pantry, Ryan doesn’t need to know about it. 

He leans against the wall outside as Ryan starts his own solitary EVP session, muttering sarcastic comments to TJ, who tries his best not to snicker behind the camera. Shane taps his foot, looking around almost anxiously, mentally berating himself for feeling like that. Suddenly, the door flings open and Ryan tumbles out, squeaking out a constant stream of ‘fuck, no, holy shit, fuck no, fuck, shit’. Shane straightens up, raising his eyebrows and putting a hand on Ryan’s shoulder in what he hopes is a comforting manner.

“Oh my fucking God—Shane. It fucking… she, the, the spirit box, it said. It said, ‘Thank you Ryan’,” he lets out in one long stream, not even pausing to take a breath between words. Shane huffs out a breath. “I know you think this is bullshit or whatever, but it fucking said it, you’ll see, when we, you’ll see later.” And then he steps out of frame to go and do some deep breathing and calm himself down. Shane, who hadn’t been able to get a single word in at the pace Ryan was talking, shares an incredulous look with TJ.

“Where to next, chief?” Shane asks, trying a light and jokey attitude to make Ryan feel calmer, especially since he seemed so unnecessarily rattled by his time in the pantry. He’s never actually seen Ryan back out from an EVP session like that—staying the night, sure, everyone knew about the Sallie house, but not EVPs. Ryan loves getting those, no matter how much they terrify him, and he always stays to the end of the session, sometimes longer if Shane decides to lean against the door.

“We’re going to the courtyard, that’s our final destination. It’s said to be a really active area, and it supposedly contains many spirits.” Ryan rocks back on his heels. “You can see them, they manifest as shadow people basically.” Shane rolls his eyes.

“What is it with these supernatural places and ‘shadow people’?”

“Maybe it’s a sign that that’s how some ghosts legitimately manifest themselves.” Shane only scoffs and indicates for Ryan to lead the way down to the courtyard.

“Okay, so we’re going to so one last EVP session right here—” he motions to the centre of the courtyard “—and also we’re going to put motion lights all around here so that we can see for definite if there’s any shadow figures moving about.” Ryan plonks the spirit box into Shane’s hands and sets about putting down his motion lights, as TJ sets up a tripod for their static cam. Shane swaps out the battery in his handheld one, and then sits on the floor, waiting for Ryan.

“We should do another séance. Remember when you had to WikiHow to do a séance in the middle of our séance?”

“You’ve said séance too much, it doesn’t sound real anymore. And besides, we don’t have candles, so we’ll have to do an EVP session,” Ryan grins though, which is what he’d hoped to achieve. Shane clicks his tongue as his counterpart comes over to sit with him, and then TJ gives them a thumbs up to signify the camera rolling.

“We’re here in the courtyard, supposedly one of the most active areas of the castle. Guests and staff alike have reported seeing the shadows of the battlements start moving on the flagstones, as if there were people on top of them. We’re just going to reach out, see if anyone wants to, y’know—”

“Have a friendly chat with the Ghoul Boys,” Shane offers. Ryan laughs, not at all perturbed by the interruption. “Firing up the world’s worst invention in 3… 2… 1…” Ryan turns on the spirit box to humour Shane’s countdown.

“Is there anyone here that would like to talk to us?” Silence. Ryan repeats the question again, and this time, the response is clear as day.

“SURE. WHY. NOT.”

“Sure, why not? I mean, fair enough. Why not, Ryan?” Shane asks with a cadence of glee.

“Shut up, Shane. Are you, um, what’s your name?”

“KA. LEN.”

“Cailean? Uh, nice to meet you, I’m Ryan, this is Shane, can you say our names?”

“RYAN. AND. SHANE.” 

“So,” Shane starts, leaning back on his elbows. Ryan watches him carefully. “Do you want to kill us, Cailean?”

“NOT. KILL. YOU. JUST. MESS. WITH. YOU. A. BIT.”

“M-Mess with—what does, uh, what do you mean by that?” Ryan manages to force the words out, though it sounds as if it took him a lot of effort to do so. As if taking the words as a cue, all the motion lights go off in sequence, like they do when someone runs past them. Ryan lets out a squeak of terror, and his hand flies out to find Shane’s gripping it unnaturally tight. Shane blinks—this is definitely new territory for the two of them. The hair on Shane’s arms is standing up; he definitely hates this with a kind of intense hatred that he didn’t think he’d ever feel for one of these places.

“I. WILL. NOT. HURT. YOU.” Ryan exhales deeply, crushing the bones in Shane’s hand. Shane shifts in his seat—Ryan won’t forgive himself if he passes up this opportunity to get some good EVP content, so he decides to bite the bullet and talk to it, pushing away his sense of pride and his overwhelming scepticism.

“What are you doing here, Cailean? What’s got you stuck out here?”

“PUT. YOUR. FREE. HANDS. OUT.” Cailean commands, and Shane and Ryan hasten to follow the instruction, even though it’s not an answer to his question. He looks at Ryan, hard terror leaking onto his face, and Ryan’s breathing seems to pick up impossibly. Both of their hands go cold, very cold, and Shane feels sort of weird, tired almost, like something’s draining the energy straight out of his body. He feels like he’s just woken up, or he’s just about to go to sleep, limbs heavy and head foggy. Just before he thinks he could pass out, the feeling stops, and he blinks at Ryan, and then slowly turns his head.

There’s a third person sitting with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cailean is the ghost! hes a scottish soldier from ww2  
> also chillingham castle is a real haunted place in northumberland, england, and it's actually quite cool?  
> i'd love if the ghoul boys went there dgjsldkgj


	2. ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryan lets out an ear-splitting, guttural scream, and the noise is so grating and foreign that it takes Shane a moment to realise that it was even Ryan who made it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dont feel as good about this chapter as i did the last one but eh  
> it's more edited than the other one is, that's for sure
> 
> also i'm kind of making this up as i go along kdsjkls

**II**

Ryan lets out an ear-splitting, guttural scream, and the noise is so grating and foreign that it takes Shane a moment to realise that it was even Ryan who made it. He falls backwards onto his elbows, and scrambles at least a foot away. Shane briefly thinks that he would have considered Ryan to be on the fighting end of the adrenaline response, not the fleeing. He has to thank his stupid gangly body for deciding to completely freeze, leaving him sitting next to this apparent ghost and unable move a muscle. He forces himself to breathe and slowly moves his gaze to the thing sitting next to him.

“Are yous off in the head?” the ghost asks, stretching its back as it does. Shane gawks at it; it’s got curly hair that he can faintly see is ginger, or maybe blond. Its skin is pale, which he supposes is fitting, and there’s a jagged red circle on the left side of its chest—if he had to hazard a guess, he’d say it’s most likely a gunshot wound. Shane doesn’t know how he would describe looking at the ghost. Again, it’s like he’s seeing a memory—it’s there, and it’s real, albeit slightly silvery, but it clearly doesn’t quite belong to the same plane of existence that Ryan, TJ and Shane do., “Well? Ye just gaunnie stare at me? I thought yous wanty talk to us. Er, is yer mate okay?” Shane huffs out a surprised breath and forces his head to turn, so he can look at his friend. The guy is curled up, dry-heaving, and TJ doesn’t really look much better off.

“Are—you’re… this is… you’re dead.” Shane digs his fingernails into his palms. His head is physically hurting from the impossibility of the situation he’s found himself in. He’s always said that he wanted Ryan to prove the existence of ghosts to him, but this isn’t quite what he expected, or wanted.

“Aye, thanks for remindin’ me pal, sure didnae wanty forget that or nothin’.”

“You’re… Cailean?” It nods, running its fingers through the grass. Shane blinks, staring at it again. He supposes he should stop calling the gh- _Cailean_ ‘it’; he was a living person at some point at least, and Shane should give him that respect. 

“Shane, we should fucking go,” Mark says anxiously, wringing his hands. Shane’s suddenly reminded of the presence of other people, which is almost a jarring experience in itself. He looks over at Mark and a pang of guilt hits him in the chest; he hasn’t seen him look so scared since Waverly Hills. He wonders briefly if this could be some sort of nightmare, or karma for goading all those ghosts in the past (thinking about that also makes Shane feel weird; everything he’s said, all the stupid threats, it’s all been to real entities, not fictions of Ryan’s imagination). Devon moves slightly behind Mark, and Shane shivers a little—sometimes on set it can be easy to forget that TJ, Mark and Devon are there with them, but seeing them all now, petrification ripe on their faces, he feels culpability rush through him. Cailean seems nonplussed; he leans back on his hands and inclines his head in Mark’s direction.

“Why’s that? Am no’ gaunnie hurt yous, yer mate’s doing that to himsel’,” he says, and Mark blanches, taking a step backwards so large that he almost knocks Devon over. Cailean turns to TJ and Ryan and stands up, and Shane can’t even begin to describe the way that he moves. It’s like watching a stream flow—the way that his muscles shift is so clearly not human, the way he moves is like a parody of walking. Ryan lets out a strangled noise and TJ crouches defensively in front of him. Shane notes that Cailean isn’t translucent like he had though he would be; he looks like a desaturated version of a human being, sure, but he’s not see-through. Cailean sits and holds his hand out, a peace offering. “Ryan, right? I heard ye earlier, through that box thing. Am Cailean.” Shane realises that the spirit box is still turned on, and he switches it off. Suddenly, it’s so much easier to hear Ryan’s whimpering breaths, the manifestation of terror in his every exhale. Usually, Shane would find this funny—not that he _likes_ to see Ryan terrified or something, it’s just amusing to watch him get in his own head, to see him jump at the slightest change of the wind—but this is… something else. 

His earlier fight/flight/freeze observation is thrown a bit off kilter when Ryan kicks his leg out, a movement so sudden that Shane thinks it was probably his nervous system acting on a base instinct instead of an intelligent thought. TJ seizes the opportunity to pull the two of them into a standing position and stumble, Ryan in tow, back over to Mark and Devon. Shane forces his leg muscles to allow him to stand as well, watching Cailean laugh to himself, almost maniacally.

“Aw fuck, that didnae even hurt. Are yous seriously leavin’?” He looks at them from where he’s spread languidly across the floor, looking all too relaxed for someone who just got kicked. Shane puts a hand on Ryan’s arm and squeezes, feeling some of the tension dissolve under his touch.

“Ryan,” he mutters, voice low, pulling the younger man to look at him. Ryan’s eyes are comically wide, like an owl’s, and he’s shivering, like a chihuahua. “This is a ghost, a non-malicious ghost, and he wants to talk. This is your dream, Ry.” Shane takes a deep breath, rubbing his thumb on Ryan’s arm in a comforting circle. “If you really want to leave, we will, but… come on. You’ll hate yourself for it later, you know you will.” Ryan breathes deeply, watching Cailean, not Shane. Cailean has his head cocked in an overly-confident manner; Shane’s certain that he could hear every word he just said.

“Okay,” Ryan breathes out, clenching and unclenching his fists. Shane smiles weakly, squeezing Ryan’s arm one last time before letting go of it. He turns back around to level Cailean with a stare. He’s sat up on his elbows, one leg stretched out in front of him and the other pulled into an upside-down V shape, considering the sky with a neutral expression. He looks almost normal, aside from the gaping wound in his chest. 

Cailean lowers his head, raising his eyebrow at Shane. Ryan fiddles with the audio recorder for a second, and then offers it out to him. They don’t have another mic to give, and Shane doubts that they’d even be able to attach a mic to a ghost. Cailean takes the audio recorder and pulls himself up into a sitting position. It takes a few moments to get a proper shot set up again, and TJ drags it out a little longer than necessary because of his reluctance. Devon shoves her hands into her pockets and blows air out, shaking her head. She looks paler than usual, but Shane figures that Ryan not freaking out puts the rest of the crew at ease.

“So you… your name is Cailean?” The ghost nods.

“Private Cailean Bowden Ariss, aye.” Ryan seems to relax a little bit next to Shane, who shifts his arm a little closer to Ryan’s, just to remind him that he’s there.

“Private? So you’re, um, you were a soldier?”

“Aye, sure was, in 1940. Went n’ got mysel’ shot though, obviously.” Cailean taps the wound on his chest, and doesn’t even flinch, another reminder of his otherworldly status. Shane feels a dull ache in his own chest; empathy pain, probably. 

“Why do you haunt this place?” Shane asks his own question, and Ryan exhales sharply. He’s been told before that some ghosts either don’t know or don’t like that question, and it can make them angry, but he doesn’t think Cailean is going to try and hurt them—if he was going to do that, then Shane reckons he would have done it when Ryan fucking kicked him.

“My battalion were here for a little bit, when it was barracks.” Cailean looks around for a moment. “I dinny ken exactly why I’m here specifically, cos it’s not where I died, that’s for sure.” 

“So how old are, um, were you?” Ryan leans forwards a little, the way he does when he’s really into something, his eyebrows creasing together a little. Shane chews on the inside of his lip, deciding that from here on out he’ll let Ryan handle the conversation, like he usually does when they have a guest on. He doesn’t know enough about ghosts or the apparent etiquette that surrounds talking to them, and, though Cailean seems pretty chilled out, Shane doesn’t _actually_ want to risk offending him. For one, he doesn’t know the extent of the damage Cailean could cause them, and for another, he doesn’t think Ryan would ever forgive him if he pissed off an actual ghost.

“Sixteen,” he replies, his hand going up to fiddle with something hanging around his neck. Shane chews on the inside of his lip some more, even though it’s starting to bleed. Sure, he knows that every war has soldiers fighting that are too young to be there, but there’s a difference between reading about sixteen- and seventeen-year-old soldiers in a textbook and sitting next to someone who was half his age when he became a soldier in what was probably one of the worst wars in all of time. Shane’s already having a hard time fully comprehending what’s happening in front of him, and this is just splitting his mind open even more.

“What’s it like to realise you’re, um, dead? And how does it happen?”

“Different for everyone. Some people dinny realise, some people dinny wanty realise. Most people realise when they cannae talk to people, I reckon? Like… I’d try an’ have a normal conversation with yous and then realise that ye aren’t hearin’ me. Then it’s like, when ye cannae touch people. A lot of it revolves around interaction wit’ the livin’. It can be really hard for some people, people like me that got killed, but for people who knew they were gaunnie die, it’s no’ the same.”

“Does everyone become a ghost?”

“Nah. I dinny ken the selection process or whatever. I think it’s mostly people who were nae buried, or cremated, or like… remembered in some way after their death.” Shane and Ryan both flinch, looking at Cailean with a whole new perspective on him. He was a sixteen-year-old from Scotland, died by gunshot wound in a war he shouldn’t have even been in, and now he haunts a place in England so far away from everything familiar to him, and even after all of that, he doesn’t know peace because nobody buried him. Cailean wipes his face quickly, shrugging. “Aw, shit, dinny look at me like that.”

“It’s just… your life kinda sucked, man,” Ryan says, and his voice is full of a bleeding sympathy that Shane doesn’t think he’s ever heard before. Cailean laughs, but it sounds more like a disbelieving noise than anything borne out of humour.

“Aye, an’ bein’ dead ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, either,” he says. “It’s been a shitshow all round, lads.” His face does something weird, and he turns around as if looking at something they can’t see, which, Shane reckons, he probably is. “Aw shit, yous… probably should go.” He sounds more serious than he did a second ago, and he stands up so quickly that the audio recorder falls through his leg. Ryan and Shane hesitate for only a split second, and Cailean looks at them almost pleadingly. “Please, fucking _run_.”

So they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dont think its historically accurate that a scottish ghost would be in northumberland but I Don't Care
> 
> some notes on the dialect:  
> aye - yes  
> cannae - can't  
> didnae - didn't  
> dinny - don't  
> gaunnie - going to  
> ken - know  
> wanty - want to  
> ye/yer - you/your  
> yous - plural of 'you'

**Author's Note:**

> cailean is the ghost! hes a scottish soldier from ww2  
> also chillingham castle is a real haunted place in northumberland, england, and it's actually quite cool?  
> i'd love if the ghoul boys went there dgjsldkgj


End file.
